The present invention relates to block building activities, particularly structured block play, and more particularly to methods of, and systems for facilitating, structured block play, including competitive structured block play.
It is increasingly recognized as important for children to attain more advanced levels of competence in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, particularly in view of the relevance of these areas to economic competiveness and national security. Despite the promising amount of growth for the STEM fields, employers have expressed concern that the number of qualified employees may be insufficient to meet future demand. One potential answer to this concern is to engage children in spatial thinking early, for research has shown that spatial thinking plays a critical role in an individual's STEM success. Research as far back as Bingham's 1937 Aptitudes and Aptitude Testing reported that one's abilities in spatial thinking can be associated with success in occupations and tasks related to engineering, science, and fields of mathematics.
Play is an important way that young children learn, and playing with spatial toys and engaging in spatial activities may prove to be an essential part of the development of spatial thinking. Block play, in particular, has received much attention in terms of its potential link to spatial thinking, and has been shown to impact spatial ability in children. In a recent study that examined 847 four to seven year-olds it was found that spatial play including block building and playing with puzzles and board games was associated with increased spatial ability.
There are at least two key types of spatial skills closely relate to block building. The first is spatial visualization, which involves mentally combining objects to produce designs. As an individual is working with blocks, he or she is mentally visualizing how blocks will fit and interact with one another. Another spatial skill related to block building is mental rotation, which involves mentally visualizing what an object will look like after it is rotated. Evidence exists that suggests a strong relationship between spatial and mathematical abilities. Studies have found that performance on spatial tasks like mental rotation is correlated with math achievement in school age children, and that visuospatial working memory is related to number and mathematical problem-solving.
Although many preschool and elementary programs as well as homes have block toys, how these toys are played with has an impact on whether and how spatial skills are developed. Two types of block play are free block play in which children are provided blocks and they create designs, and structured block play in which children are provided blocks and they copy a model of a structure.
In structured block play, a pre-defined model of an assembly or arrangement of model blocks is analyzed by the user. Usually, the model blocks are not tangible blocks, but are instead visual representations of model blocks in a predefined arrangement. Hence, a typical model for structured block play is an image representing a predefined arrangement of model blocks. It is structured block play that requires analysis of a spatial representation and that may result in more significant improvements in spatial ability. Structured block play is thought to develop skills in estimation, measurement, patterning, part-whole relations, visualization, symmetry, transformation and balance. Arguably, while classrooms may have block building activities, there is not enough structured block play for children to greatly enhance spatial learning; some researchers suggest that systematically including structured block play in the early childhood classroom could further develop spatial reasoning.
Blocks Rock!™, a commercially-available competitive block building game available from Blocks Rock! LLC, 733 S. West Street, Indianapolis, Ind. 46225 USA (www.blocksrockgame.com; www.blocksrock.com), is a speeded, structured block building system in the form of a game in which two or more players (preferably of at least age six) race to complete their respective replications of predefined models using identical sets of wooden replication blocks. In Blocks Rock!™, the models are images shown on cards that represent two-dimensional (2-D) arrangements of component model blocks.
The set of replication blocks included in Blocks Rock!™ is a variety of rectangular, square and triangular prisms of different sizes and/or colors: blue, red, yellow, green and purple, with each color corresponding to a particular block shape or size. Specifically, Blocks Rock!™ includes 24 of the following replication blocks in their parenthetically indicated quantities, each type defined by a particular combination of shape and color:
A. Green triangular prisms (4);
B. Red square prisms (4);
C. Yellow square prisms (4);
D. Small, purple rectangular prisms (8); and
E. Large, blue rectangular prisms (4).
The replication block types represent corresponding component model block types used in each depicted model. The models depicted on the cards each use no more than ½ of each of the above-described replication block types. Therefore, in Blocks Rock!™, one full set of 24 replication blocks accommodates play between two players, with the players provided with identical sets of 12 replication blocks which they position in a plane, as along or vertically upward from a tabletop, to manually assemble his or her replication of the 2-D model. As used herein, to “manually” assemble a replication means to position replication blocks through direct contact with a player's hand.
The rules of the Blocks Rock!™ game call for the players to take turns flipping over a card, and then concurrently position replication blocks of their respective replication block sets in a race against each other to build their respective replications of the 2-D model shown on the card. The first player to finish his or her replication rings a call bell to audibly signal its completion, and wins the round. If that player's replication is not accurate, the round is still in play, with either player having the option to continue positioning replication blocks to complete an accurate replication, ring the bell, and win the round. Ringing the bell is an enjoyable part of the game for most young children. The player winning the round collects the card displaying the image. Cards depicting certain models may have relatively greater or lesser point values than cards depicting other models, and at the end of the game each player adds up the points on his or her collected cards, with the winner having the highest total number of points. Alternatively, as when a player is too young to add points, the winner is the person with the most collected cards at the end of the game. Blocks Rock!™ thus facilitates competitive structured block play, which encourages not only accuracy but speed in analyzing and then replicating the structures represented by the predefined models.
As used herein, “competitive” structured block play means that the activity is a contest between two or more players pitted against each other in a race to concurrently build their respective replications and be the first to finish an accurate replication of the model. Compared to structured block play designed as a timed contest between two or more players each separately and independently racing against a clock (e.g., a stopwatch) to finish his or her replication in the comparatively shortest time, competitive structured block play between two or more players forces rapid play and is believed to better enhance related brain activity.
Structured block building games or systems like Blocks Rock!™ are thought to improve a number of visuospatial skills including patterning and visualization, and a strong relationship between spatial processing ability and mathematical competency has been shown in studies. A recent study supports the hypothesis that competitive structured block play with the game Blocks Rock!™ can result in improvement in spatial ability, and that such improvement would be evident in a mental rotation task as well as a visuospatial problem-solving task, the Tower of London. The Tower of London is a well-known test used in applied clinical neuropsychology for the assessment of executive functioning. This study found that block play with the use of the game Blocks Rock!™ significantly improved performance on the Tower of London test.
While there has been some debate in the literature regarding whether training on one visuospatial task transfers to other tasks, studies have suggested that they can. In one study of seven and eight year-old subjects, training on Blocks Rock!™ for five days, for 30 minutes per day, resulted in not only transfer to mental rotation but also to both visuospatial and mathematical problem-solving. Given the importance of spatial thinking to success in STEM fields, activities involving structured block play, and particularly competitive structured block play, may prove to be important for helping to set a solid foundation in these areas.
It is therefore desirable to provide methods of, and systems for facilitating, structured block play, and particularly competitive block play, in ways that introduce additional challenges to users and will continue to appeal to children as they grow.